LI doctors charged in healthcare fraud crackdown

Among the hundreds charged are 10 people from the Western District of Kentucky, including six from Jefferson County, accused of participating in health care fraud schemes.

The seven people were charged in connection with five separate schemes to defraud Medicare, Medicaid and other Department of Health and Human Services programs. One case involved a pharmacy chain in Texas with fraudulent orders of more than one million hydrocodone and oxycodone pills and selling them for millions of dollars to drug transporters.

With the new cases being filed in "Spinal Cap", the fraudulent claims related to this scheme now span a 15-year period and total more than $950 million, prosecutors said.

On Thursday, the U.S Justice Department (DOJ) announced the arrests of 601 people on charges of healthcare fraud amounting to over $2 billion in losses from government healthcare programs and insurers.

This announcement appears to reflect both an ongoing commitment by the DOJ to prosecute health care fraud and opioid abuse cases, and that the emphasis by HHS on administratively excluding providers has become a part of the enforcement landscape over the past year. In many cases, investigators said, patient beneficiaries were paid cash kickbacks for supplying information to medical providers.

"It is not that we are over-regulating, but doctors and medical practitioners are more aware", he said.

Thomas Carpenter, who was medical director at Foundational Health, a Tampa area clinic, and Caridad Limberg-Gonzalez, who owned the clinic, are charged with conspiracy to commit health care fraud and wire fraud, four counts of health care fraud and three counts of making false statements.

"There is an incredible array of scams, some of which involve services that are never provided, and some of which use complicated and sophisticated ruses to hide illegal acts, such as bribes", said First Assistant U.S. Attorney Tracy L. Wilkison, in a statement.

Erving Rodriguez: charged with one count of conspiracy to solicit and receive health care kickbacks.

The Medicare Fraud Strike Force operations are part of a joint initiative between the Department of Justice and HHS to focus their efforts to prevent and deter fraud and enforce current anti-fraud laws around the country.

Two other defendants are accused of operating three "false-front" medical clinics that resulted in $4.7 million in false medical billings submitted to three insurance companies and $258,000 paid in false billings, the prosecutor said.

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